“Alec,” he said solemnly, “I owe friend Jefferson an apology, though I can’t very well tender it. I was hopelessly wrong about him, and you were hopelessly right. He didn’t kill Stanworth at all. It’s extremely annoying of him considering how neatly I solved this little problem of ours; but there’s the fact.”
“Humph!” Alec observed. “I won’t say, ‘I told you so,’ because I know how annoying it would be for you. But I don’t mind telling you that I’m thinking it hard.”
“Yes, and the most irritating part is that you’re fully entitled to do so,” Roger said, throwing his pyjamas into the case. “That’s what I find so irksome.”
“But I suppose you’ve found somebody else to take his place all right?”
“No, I haven’t. Isn’t it maddening? But I’ll tell you one significant fact I’ve unearthed. That butler had as much cause as anyone, if not more, to regret the fact that Stanworth was still polluting the earth.”
“Had he? Oh! But look here, how do you know that Jefferson didn’t do it?”
Roger explained.
“Not much so far as actual hard-and-fast-evidence goes, I’m afraid,” he concluded, “but we greater detectives are above evidence. It’s psychology that we study, and I feel in every single bone in my body that Jefferson was telling the truth.”
“Lady Stanworth!” Alec commented. “Good Lord!”
“Some men are brave, aren’t they? Still, I daresay she’ll make an excellent wife; I believe that’s the right thing to say on this sort of occasion. But seriously, Alec, I’m absolutely baffled again. I think I shall have to turn the case over to you.”